HistoricSiteMarkers
Postwar & Contemporary

A.P. Carter Grocery Store & Carter Family Museum

Scott County, Scott County, Virginia

Marker Inscription

A.P. Carter Grocery Store Established 1945 Janette Carter Old Time Music Show 1974 Carter Family Memorial Museum 1977

The Story

In the hills of southwest Virginia, A.P. Carter opened his grocery store in 1945, in the same community that gave the world the Carter Family, pioneers of recorded country music. Decades later his daughter Janette kept the flame alive, launching the Old Time Music Show in 1974 and helping open the Carter Family Memorial Museum in 1977. Together these sites turned a quiet Appalachian crossroads into a shrine of American roots music.

Why it matters

The Carter Family's recordings helped birth the commercial country music industry, making this modest corner of Scott County a wellspring of a uniquely American art form.

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Related people

  • Β· A.P. Carter
  • Β· Janette Carter

Themes & tags

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